A tale of burn out, petty crime and more burn out.

So, my last post was in August last year. I was kicking off an awesome series interviewing fellow Kiwi bloggers about what they know about MBTI and how they are influenced by their type.

Then radio silence.

So what happened between then and now? Well, a shit load to be honest. So let’s break it down:

Burn out

I was overwhelmed with responses from so many amazing bloggers and I was spending lots of time researching and putting the interviews together (thank you so much to everyone who responded back then, by the way). I was spending hours every night working on stuff – I’ve still got a lot of drafts saved here on wordpress. Ultimately the stress of not feeling like I was qualified enough to really talk about it (beyond a personal interest in it) really ate away at me.

I started doubting myself, freaking out, not wanting to let these awesome people down by delivering a sub par series. So as many people with anxiety can probably relate to, I stuck my head in the sand and abandoned it. Instead, I started to live with the guilt of abandoning the project temporarily. There was always an intention to pick it up again – I just mentally needed a break first. The guilt ate away at me and made me feel worse and it just snowballed to this horrible situation of feeling like it was too big to ever accomplish.

Over the Christmas break, I started to feel like I was finally capable of not only picking it up again, but really starting to blog in earnest. I opened up OneNote and started planning once again. I was full of ideas. Then it happened.

The Break In (Part One of Two)

January 11th, 2016. My first day back at work. My boyfriend and I decided to get some Burger Fuel on the way home as a special treat and I was so excited to get home because I got a peanut piston with buns (I was doing Low Carb at the time so huge treat) and kumara fries!

We get home and enter the house through the garage, walking into the lounge. It wasn’t until I stopped to put my bag down that I noticed the back door was slightly open.. and then noticed the windows were all wide open too. Weird. Maybe our flatmate was home (even weirder – he’s never home). We headed upstairs hoping to see him on his bed playing on his laptop, instead we were greeted with his room torn apart. Drawers pulled out and stuff scattered all over his bed. I was still trying to process it – maybe he’s trying to move out in a hurry and didn’t want us to know? That would be so unlike him. He may only spend 30% of his time here, but he’s still an honourable sort of guy who would give us a months notice..

Of course, the connections were already starting to form in my head. “Illogical, none of this makes sense, the only other explanation is.. ”

“No, no, no, no, no, no, noooooooo!!!!” I ran down the hall and into our bedroom. Someone has been here. Someone has torn my room apart thrown my drawers (and their contents) across the room in search of who knows what. Tee-shirts, pants, everything – tossed around the room wildly. My underwear was scattered across the entire room. Immediately I knew they had stolen the small amount of cash I had kept in one of those drawers.

Of course, that’s not what I was the most worried about. The thing that had me freaking out the most was if they had taken my laptop. My laptop that would normally be hidden away under my bed, but was recently set up on my freshly cleaned desk for all the world (room) to see.

I looked at my desk and my heart sank completely. It was gone. They’d even had the presence of mind to take the power cable.

Some will understand and others will think me a complete idiot, but that laptop was a huge part of my life. It was like an extension of my brain in some ways. It was set up exactly how I liked it. It had my saved progress in games. It had programs and old games that I had scoured the internet to find and even longer working out how to install and make work on a modern PC. Taking my laptop (even though it was password protected and didn’t have anything I would be afraid to show my Mum) felt like a huge invasion on my mental privacy. Not to mention the literal invasion of privacy when they went through the contents of all my drawers. Knowing they touched (and threw around) my underwear made me feel so gross.

They took some other small gadgets like a tablet, my headphones and earphones (ew!), and an external hard drive with my backups on it (WHY?!).

I was utterly devastated and in shock. I called the police and filed a report, then the insurance company. The ever so helpful CSR on the other end of the line had to put me on hold for ten minutes to check with her supervisor if windows that had been crow barred open with security stays smashed off by the burglars would count as “forced entry”.

To top it all off, once I had finally made all the calls I needed to and could finally sit down and start to process, I opened up Facebook on my phone to see a whole bunch of “RIP David Bowie” posts. I’m not someone who usually gets properly upset over a celebrity dying, but in my heightened emotional state it really devastated me. He was one of my favourite artists and I even used to have a blog named after one of his songs.

That night I sat on the couch downstairs and cried while watching the Labyrinth.

The next day the cops came by to dust for fingerprints. Unfortunately it had rained overnight and we weren’t able to close the window thanks to the damage caused by the low life scum who crow barred it open. Any potential prints had been basically washed away.

The insurance process took forever. I asked the person dealing with my case if they could just give me the cash value of my laptop as I was considering buying a desktop computer. The thieves didn’t even touch my boyfriends desktop computer so I felt it would be a safer choice. “Nope, your policy states like for like. We can only replace it with another laptop.“.

After almost 4 weeks, we finally were able to collect our replacement items from Noel Leeming. They had to order in a laptop especially for me as my old laptop had really high end specs with a large screen that is hard to come by now.

I got everything home and while it was exciting to have new things (even better than the things that were stolen), I wasn’t able to put it behind me just yet. I still had that feeling of it only being mine temporarily.

Oh Katie, that sucks! I’ve had a similar experience and it’s such a yuck feeling that someone has been through your stuff. Not to mention taking things that are of little financial value but are of a great emotional value (or just a massive hassle not to have). Glad to see you’re back blogging again though!

You poor thing, how devastating. I’ve never had anything like that happen to me before, but I’ve had close friends that have… and it is so devastating. Hope you’re okay and glad you’re getting back into blogging! This was such a well written post 🙂 x

OH HEY

That's my face. I'm Katie, twenty-something. I live in Auckland, New Zealand and kind of suck at being a girl - not to mention being an adult. Join me on my adventure of inevitable screw ups as I try to figure out how everyone else does it.